At their simplest form, all digital media are strings of ones and zeroes, called binary code. There are other forms of code as well, like hexadecimal, Base64, or ASCII. With all of these comes the ability to corrupt or glitch a code, creating a new coding by inserting, deleting, replacing, or adjusting sections of it. However, if you go too far, you can completely ruin the header (the beginning of the file that tells the computer what format it is), and it won't open again, called breaking. Whether it's an image, music, or text, the outcome is usually unexpected, but interesting............

truncating image files

deleting data from a hex code and replacing it with more information from somewhere else (i.e. copy/paste into itself) makes the file fill in the areas where it doesn't know where the original information disappeared to. so it shoves each line of code to one side, which adds up for each consecutive line. that's the complicated reason why its leaning:)

sampler ASCII portrait

using the sample ascii characters( . o 0 8 @ ) as progressing lighter (the period) to darker (the ampersat, or "at" sign) grayscale values. so turn a 2x2 pixel space into these characters, giving the illusion of posterized gray values.

These are the results of turning text into raw pixels of color. A slow process, but the product is really neat. I create my own hexadecimal sequences with a free open source software called "XVI32", then opening as a .RAW file (since it refuses to open as .JPEG) in Photoshop.

hearing colors and seeing sound....

It even works with a song. This is "The Music Scene" by Blockhead. All songs come with a "header" in their coding. The header tells the name of the file, what file format it is, and what to open it with, along with its origin and creation date. That information is the thin strip of color at the top. The blank space (black) is extra room so that the computer can differentiate between the header and when the actual song (colorful pattern) begins.